Why Germany Hasn't Hosted a Grand Prix Since 2019: The Impact of Schumacher's Retirement

 Taken from Motor sport online, August 2023

August means one thing in Formula 1, and that is the circus being packed up and going off on holiday: the summer shutdown. But for the sport’s old boys such as I, early August will always be German Grand Prix time.

Yet there will be no German GP this year, nor has there been one since 2019, although there was an Eifel Grand Prix in Germany in 2020. Why not?

It is in many ways a peculiar absence. Mercedes-Benz runs one of the biggest and most successful F1 teams, and it also supplies power units to three others (Aston Martin, McLaren and Williams).

Another German automotive giant, Audi, is soon to take over the team that most of us still call Sauber but is currently branded Alfa Romeo, and the result will be a works Audi F1 team from 2026 onwards. There are more petrolheads in Germany than there are in many countries that host grands prix – they famously enjoy their unrestricted Autobahnen – and, in addition to Mercedes-Benz and Audi, BMW and Porsche also manufacture sensationally fast road cars. Yet still there is no German Grand Prix!

The truth is that it is drivers, not cars, who put bums on grandstand seats – and indeed on sofas in front of TV screens – but only very special drivers. In Germany, in recent years, only one has truly inspired racing fans: Michael Schumacher. There is a German driver in F1 still – Nico Hülkenberg – but, good though he is, he does not stir the spirits of his country’s racing fans in anything like the same way as Schumacher did. Until this year there was another German F1 driver, too: Sebastian Vettel. Yet, despite his four world championships and 53 grand prix wins, he was also unable to generate even a fraction of the patriotic fervour that the man they called ‘Schumi’ could inspire.

“Even Vettel, with four world titles, failed to draw German crowds”

When Schumacher was in his pomp, in the ’90s and ’00s, German GP race days used to draw crowds of more than 100,000 impassioned spectators, and a combined total of upwards of a quarter of a million would turn up on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. He retired at the end of the 2012 F1 season. The next year, 2013, only 44,000 fans turned up at the Nürburgring on race day, even though a German (Vettel) was in the process of running away with the drivers’ world championship.

The year after that, 2014, at Hockenheim, despite the fact that the drivers’ world championship was being thrillingly fought for by a German adonis (Nico Rosberg) and a British megastar (Lewis Hamilton), both of them in Mercedes-Benz cars decked out in Germany’s famous Silver Arrows livery, the race day attendance was barely better, and on Friday in particular the grandstands were ignominiously empty. Toto Wolff was moved to say: “It’s just not satisfying. If you compare Hockenheim Friday to Friday at Silverstone or Friday in Austria, it’s a different world, and we have to understand why that is.” Well, Toto, I can tell you why that was: it was because Michael had retired.

When Stefano Domenicali was asked about the German GP problem last year, he said: “If anyone wants a German Grand Prix, it’s me. But I just don’t see any representatives in Germany who want to sit down with us and make a constructive suggestion.”

They will not, Stefano. If Michael’s son Mick had turned out to be as gifted as his father, things would have been different. But, sadly, the apple fell just a little too far from the tree on this occasion.

Moreover, the available circuits lack lustre. German GP have been run at only three venues – Avus, Nürburgring and Hockenheim. Avus held only two, in 1926 and 1959. All the rest have been at either Nürburgring or Hockenheim. But, in F1 terms, both those circuits are now pale shadows of the glorious racetracks that used to host German grands prix in the past.

The old Nürburgring Nordschleife, the infamous ‘green hell’, still exists, is extremely busy, and will for ever remain most people’s idea of the greatest circuit of all time, even though it last staged a German Grand Prix 47 years ago. By contrast the sanitised Nürburgring nearby is just that: sanitised. As for Hockenheim, when it supplanted the ’Ring, it was vilified by F1 purists – for what it was not rather than for what it was. What it was, until its 2002 redesign, was unique. Yes, Monza was as quick in terms of average lap time, but the venerable autodromo was rapid because it was made up of average-length straights and fast corners. The old Hockenheim was made up of super-long straights and slow corners.

As such, to be competitive at Monza in recent-ish years, you needed and still need a medium-ish amount of downforce to be quick enough in the fast corners – whereas to be competitive at the old Hockenheim you needed to optimise your car’s top speed on those super-long straights and ask your drivers to muscle their way through the slow turns, aided by minimal downforce. It therefore favoured drivers who were prepared to monster their cars. It is no coincidence that Jochen Rindt, Niki Lauda, Mario Andretti, Alan Jones, René Arnoux, Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell, Gerhard Berger and, yes, Michael Schumacher all won there.

“German tracks are now pale shadows of their former selves”

Thirty-odd years ago I track-tested a Porsche 911 SuperCup car at the old Hockenheim. I was shown the lines and braking points by Walter Röhrl, and, although I tried to pay attention as I sat awe-struck next to a master at work, when I then tried to emulate him alone I was both untidy and slow, even embarrassing myself with a half-spin at the Sachs Kurve.

I have never driven the Nordschleife, but Mercedes-Benz used to provide ‘taxi rides’ there, in fast AMG road cars, for journalists and others. One year the offer was extended to a few McLaren staffers, for, then as now, the Woking team was using Mercedes-Benz engines. Paddy Lowe, Sam Michael and I were assigned a four-seat AMG C-Class. Sam and I belted ourselves into the back seats, and greeted our superstar chauffeur warmly – by name. Paddy then climbed into the front seat, and said, “Hi.”

Something about the McLaren technical director’s manner indicated to me that he had not recognised the legendary ’Ringmeister sitting on his left. Soon I was sure of it. “Have you driven around here before?” Paddy asked, breezily. Sam and I looked at each other, and winced.

There was a pause. “Many, many times,” Klaus Ludwig replied, deadpan, and floored the throttle. What followed was a brilliant, scintillating, coruscating lap, driven by a man who had probably won as many races at the ’Ring as anyone in history and knew every inch of its daunting asphalt rather better than the back of his own hand. As you can imagine, Sam and I ripped the piss out of Paddy remorselessly afterwards.